Birthday Candles Tickets

If you wished for a Broadway show or Debra Messing's return to the stage — or both — when you blew out your birthday candles, you're in luck. Messing will star alongside fellow TV favorites Andre Braugher and Enrico Colantoni in Noah Haidle's Birthday Candles on Broadway. Stay tuned for information about Birthday Candles tickets on New York Theatre Guide soon.

Birthday Candles is a play that follows Ernestine Ashworth (Messing) from her 17th to 101st birthday. She bakes a single birthday cake in that time, the same way her mother taught her. Matt and Kenneth (Braugher and Colantoni, respectively), two boys who first admired Ernestine as teenagers, are the only other constants that remain. Everything and everyone else in Ernestine's life changes as she grows older. She changes from a headstrong, rebellious teen into an adult with a fairly conventional, family-oriented life, and she reflects at every stage on what makes life fulfilling.

Haidle is making his Broadway debut with Birthday Candles in New York. Detroit Public Theatre originally commissioned the play in 2018. Vivienne Benesch directed the premiere, and she will return to direct the Birthday Candles Broadway production. The Detroit production was acclaimed in the Detroit Free Press as "quietly profound" and "one of the most satisfying and moving new plays" in Detroit at the time.

Kate Hopgood will provide original music for the show, and the rest of the creative team includes costume design by Toni-Leslie James, set design by Christine Jones, sound design by John Gromada, and lighting design by Jen Schriever.

Experience Birthday Candles on Broadway and join the party! Birthday Candles tickets will be on sale soon.

^{(Photo courtesy of Polk & Co.)}

Debra Messing returns to the stage as Ernestine Ashworth, who spends her 17th birthday agonizing over her insignificance in the universe. Soon enough, it’s her 18th birthday. Even sooner, her 41st. Her 70th. Her 101st. Five generations, dozens of goldfish, an infinity of dreams, one cake baked over a century. What makes a lifetime…into a life? Birthday Candles is a poignant new play as fearless in scope as it is tremendous in heart.

By: Noah Haidle
Director: Vivienne Benesch
Producer: Roundabout Theatre Company
Cast list: Debra Messing (as Ernestine Ashworth), Andre Braugher (as Matt), and Enrico Colantoni (as Kenneth), alongside Crystal Finn (as Joan/Alex/Beth), Susannah Flood (as Alice/Madeline/Ernie), and Christopher Livingston (as Billy/John)
Design: Christine Jones
Lighting: Jen Schriever
Costume: Toni-Leslie James
Sound: John Gromada
Other info: Original Music by Kate Hopgood